UK Data: Fighting Fit or D.O.A.?

Time to beat the data protection drum again, I feel. Self-interest aside, this is an issue we all need to be acutely aware of, both as data handlers and consumers. Citizens even, for that matter.

The Data Protection Act (DPA) and Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations (CPUT) wield big legislative sticks against companies and government departments who inappropriately use or, worse still, lose sensitive personal information.

So imagine my surprise when I read last week that the NHS is trialling the roll-out of its new Summary Care Record scheme (SCR) across Stoke-on-Trent, Medway, Brighton-and-Hove and the Isle-of-Wight. In principle, the SCR sounds like a very good thing, as it enables ‘each person’s detailed records to be securely shared between different parts of the local NHS, such as the GP surgery and hospital’ (NHS website). Long story short: The SCR is designed to speed up the effectiveness and quality of care we receive.

But let’s pause here for a moment. Contained in each and every person’s SCR is their name, address, date of birth and NHS number as well as detailed information about past and present medical conditions. Highly confidential and sensitive stuff which most of us wouldn’t like to see fall into the hands of, say, insurance or drug companies. Yet this is precisely the information that is now being shared internally by the NHS in the aforementioned areas – the same NHS that was responsible for around 27 per cent of breaches of confidential information reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office last year.

While thankfully, to date, there is no evidence of any personal information falling into the wrong hands, neither have their been any prosecutions or even wrist-slapping against NHS trusts or employees for failing to fulfill their legal responsibilities under the Data Protection Act.

Doesn’t inspire confidence, does it. But the NHS isn’t alone in this ‘data malaise’, as only 42 per cent of UK organisations have any form of data quality strategy in  place, according to a 2008 QAS survey.

Hmmm... I think it's time some of us booked in for a data health check-up, don't you? 

Mind Your B’s and C’s This Week

Starmer’s Stinker

How unfortunate that our newly minted Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Keir Starmer QC, has begun 2009 by voicing his support of Westminster’s proposed ‘super database’.

By contrast, the DPP’s predecessor, Sir Ken Macdonald QC, declared before Christmas that the Government’s plan to record and store all UK communications data (including e-mails, VOiP and mobile calls) to be a ‘hellhouse’ of private information.

Pandora’s Box is more like it, if you ask me.

As if the civil liberties and human rights issues the new database raises weren’t serious enough,  what I find particularly alarming is that the new database is apparently to be run by the private sector, ‘in a bid to increase access for law enforcement agencies’ (The Guardian, 9/01/09).

I can see the Government Tender Document now, can’t you? ‘The Home Office, the UK’s biggest data loser, seeks private contractor to store sensitive personal information for several months before breaching national security by misplacing a laptop containing millions of call and e-mail transcripts on the 4.50pm express bound for Charing Cross.’ 

For history will repeat, believe me.

It was one of the more sensible recommendations contained in last year’s Walport Report – better data handling protocols for government departments. The wider data community’s yet to hear how that hornets’ nest of issues is to be tackled when this super-stupid-whatever-the-hell-it’s-to-be-called-database is put back on the agenda.

2009 Luftballons

La Toya Jackson on Celebrity Big Brother, the latest bloodshed in Gaza, Woolworths closing its shutters for the last time, Waterford Wedgwood going bust... We're only days into the New Year and already 2009 seems to be taking on a decidedly scary and apocalyptic tone.

So imagine my surprise when, mulling over the precarious state of world affairs as I was last night, a welcome Laphroaig in hand (when the going gets tough, the tough sip single malt, right?), it suddenly occurred to me that I'd heard all this talk of doom, gloom and military overreaction before, and in a bloody pop song, to boot: Nena's 99 Luftballons, to be precise.

I've been banging on about this a lot lately, I realise, but seriously: I reckon it's time we cut the crap, people. We urgently need a paradigm shift in just about all areas of daily life. The economy, politics, education - you name it. Surely we need new attitudes and new ways of thinking as never before.

Roll on Obama's Inauguration Speech later this month. Maybe he can supply some inspiration-slash-clues to the best way forward.

Incidentally, whatever happened to Nena? Colour me a bad ‘80s pop aficionado, but I'm feeling right nostalgic now for 1984.